Student Loans
by krakens
Summary: (LBD) For all her advice to strangers on the internet that marriage is something that should be discussed thoroughly, this conversation kind of terrifies her.


"If I asked you to marry me," Darcy says one night while they are eating pizza. "Would you say yes?"

In Lizzie's estimation, this is a pretty sorry excuse for a proposal, even by William "That Was Badly Put" Darcy standards. But to be fair to him, the question isn't exactly random. Jane's wedding is in two months and Lizzie has been driving herself crazy trying to fulfill all her duties as maid of honor. Naturally, this leads to complaining. Sometimes the complaining is formatted in the form of "at _my _wedding, I'll do xyz differently". Last week it was that Jane is going to let their mother bake her wedding cake, which Lizzie would definitely not allow for at her own (hypothetical) wedding. A couple minutes ago, it was that Caroline looks unfairly hot in her bridesmaid dress and that Lizzie wonders if she can get away with making her wear orange at her wedding (because while she isn't vindictive enough to exclude a member of her family from her wedding party, she _is_ petty enough to speculate that orange is not Caroline's color).

So she can see where he's coming from.

Still, despite the fact that she's come to view marrying him as an implicit eventuality, it's not in her five year plan. It takes her a full thirty seconds to figure out the best way to say this.

"I do want to marry you," she says, looking him in the eye as she speaks. "But if you asked me right now I'd probably say no."

He nods tersely and makes what she has come to think of as the lobster face. There is a long gap in the conversation, and she has just drawn a deep breath to speak again and elaborate because clearly this is a topic that need some elaboration, but he beats her to the punch.

"Why?" he asks.

"Because you're cutting your pizza with a fork and knife and I can't take you seriously," she responds without missing a beat. She sees that humor was not the way to go there, though, and readjusts her tone to be a little more serious. "A lot of reasons," she says, running a hand through her hair. "None of them are that I don't want to be with you. I promise."

"I'm just trying to," he says, taking one of those intensely awkward mid-sentence pauses he takes when he's uncomfortable. She wishes he wasn't uncomfortable. "Paint a picture."

"Sure," Lizzie says, setting her pizza down and folding her hands on the table in front of her as she mentally sorts through her list of reasons. She picks the least inflammatory one first, because for all her advice to strangers on the internet that marriage is something that should be discussed thoroughly, this conversation kind of terrifies her.

"Well, for one, Jane's getting married and I don't want to steal her thunder," she says. She briefly regrets it, because even though that's true, it also has the cadence of a joke. But he seems to have finally relaxed into the conversation.

"It would be unfair to your mother's nerves, I suppose," he says. She laughs.

"Exactly."

"But that doesn't have to be so much of a delay," he reasons. "Six weeks until the wedding—"

"_Six_?" Lizzie interjects with an exasperated moan. She could have sworn it was two months.

"Another few months to allow them the spotlight as newlyweds," he concludes.

"And another few after that, because that's when they're going to decide they don't actually want to live fifteen minutes away from my parents and move back to LA," Lizzie amends.

"Still, that's not so long," Darcy says. "We could…" He catches the look on her face, her pursed lips. "No?"

"It's just…" she hems. He waits patiently. "It's a lot of things," she sighs.

"You're clearly thinking of something specific," he says. He says it like a statement but sometimes he intones and phrases his questions like statements, so she's not really sure what effect he's going for.

"My student loans," she eventually mutters, staring at her food. She's been putting off talking about this, because she really doesn't like talking about money, whether it's her family's financial trouble or who's paying for dinner. She's been avoiding the topic of her student loans specifically because they both know that Jane and Bing have already worked out what they're doing about hers. Namely, Bing is going to pay them after they're married. They came to that decision together and Lizzie doesn't question that it's the right one for them, but.

"Your student loans?" he asks.

"I have to pay them back," she says. "It's going to take a while."

"That doesn't matter."

"It does to me."

"But getting engaged – getting married, even, wouldn't change that," he says, before rattling off some jargon about liability for debts and how they'd need to sign a pre-nup anyway because… Lizzie's head starts to buzz, honestly, and she tunes it out. She doesn't even let him finish before she cuts him off.

"See? See?" she asks, gesturing at him with her soda can. "I don't have any money and I'm in a ton of debt and _you_ have a ton of money and a crazy miserly aunt who thinks I'm a gold digger and getting married will just make _everything more complicated_."

"So… you don't want to get married," he says, his tone apprehensive.

"Right now," she protests. "I don't want to get married right now."

"It's going to be at least a little complicated regardless of when we do it," Darcy says.

"Yeah, I know," Lizzie replies. She can hear her tone getting higher and pitchier and she tries to calm herself down. "I just… I want to pay off my student loans first. It'll make me feel better about all the other complicated things. I'm going to… need some time to do that, first."

"How long?" he inquires, looking at his plate.

She considers it, crunches some numbers in her head, and is way more generous about her prospective salary than she would have been a year ago. "Five years?"

He stares at her for a long second. Then: "Okay."

"Okay?" she asks. "Just okay?"

"Do you want me to argue with you?" he asks, arching an eyebrow. She doesn't know what's wrong with her because she seriously, honestly contemplates the question for half a second.

"Well no," she says, shaking her head slightly to dislodge that train of thought. "I mean, thank you. I'm basically asking you to wait around for five years and you're just like… _okay_."

"Well, we do live together," he says. "The idea of spending the next five years with you isn't exactly an unpleasant prospect. In fact, I look forward to it."

She can't help the broad smile on her face as she says "I do too."


End file.
